Your example dramatically overstates the upside, understates the risk, and ignores a lot of the difficult problems in evaluating options - there are large uncer

Your example dramatically overstates the upside, understates the risk, and ignores a lot of the difficult problems in evaluating options - there are large uncertainties in valuation and very limited information, there is a negligible possibility of fraud or misrepresentation, the person evaluating might have good reason to choose less risk (e.g. starting from 0 savings greatly increases the value of stable predictable income), there is additional risk in having salary and investment tied to the same company, etc. Let's change it to make it slightly more realistic - on offer are options which have a 1% (at best) chance of being worth 1 million in 10 years or a guaranteed higher salary over 10 years worth 300k more. It's not quite so clear cut in that case, and depends greatly on the circumstances and judgement of the person making that call with very limited information. I think it's more reasonable to assume they are worth 0, as the majority of options end up at 0, and the probability of making more through options than salary is nowhere near that in your example.